Southern Nevada needs more software developers, managers and nurses, according to a workforce report released today.
The product of a collaboration among the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, Workforce Connections and the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, the report offers insight into the projected top 100 most in-demand jobs in target industries through 2026.
After the top three, listed in order above, the report says Southern Nevada will also need plenty of civil engineers, financial managers, aircraft mechanics and respiratory therapists.
“Software developer jumped to the top of the list for a variety of reasons, I think,” said Jonas Peterson, president and CEO of the alliance. “Those are high-paying jobs and are critically important to our target industries. They’re in-demand not only in Southern Nevada, but also nationally, so the level of competition for those positions is high.”
Dubbed Workforce Blueprint 2.0, the study is essentially a continuation of workforce study by LVGEA released in 2017.
The top target industries — those expected to continue to grow in the region — for the study include business headquarters and services; emerging technology; manufacturing, supply chain management and logistics; autonomous systems; banking and insurance; health care services and medical education; and gaming tourism and conventions.
“What we have now is virtual full employment,” said Jaime Cruz, executive director of Workforce Connections. “Because of that, employers are basically taking employees from each other. We have new companies coming here, but they need people.”
Because the region continues to grow, both in population and in an overall economic sense, facilitators of the report said it will be important to fill talent gaps in specific areas.
That effort will include working with educators to help make sure students are being trained for the in-demand jobs of tomorrow, said LVGEA President and CEO Jonas Peterson.
“This is really a new workforce strategy to help us align all of our education and training programs with the jobs of the future,” Peterson said. “That’s what Workforce Blueprint 2.0 is in a nutshell. We’re growing rapidly and we have a lot of things going in the right direction, but we still have a long ways to go.”
Peterson said it will be important to have the right post-secondary education and training programs available to students in Southern Nevada.
For instance, according to the report, there are more than 200 openings annually in Southern Nevada for software and application developers, though the regional “workforce pipeline” churns out only about 30 workers in the field annually.
Peterson also pointed out that a majority of the top-100 in-demand jobs — 52% — require an associate’s degree or less.
“These aren’t all jobs that require a four-year degree,” Peterson said. “That’s something I thought was very interesting.”
The talent gap, though, isn’t something in the future. It’s here now, said Mary Beth Sewald, president and CEO of the chamber.
“We hear from our members all the time that our talent pool is shallow,” Sewald said. “Now is the time for us to come together as a community to solve that problem. That’s why it was so important that the stars aligned and we were able to partner with LVGEA and Workforce Connections on this blueprint.”
Filling those employment gaps, Cruz said, is going to take some outside-the-box thinking.
“There are some alternative labor pools that we’re going to have to continue to look at,” Curz said. “That could include people re-entering the workforce after incarceration, returning veterans and individuals with disabilities.”
Cruz also noted people in their late teens and early 20s are disproportionately holding out from joining the workforce.
“There a number of disengaged young people not working,” Cruz said. “This new generation, they’re different in some ways than earlier generations. Some of them have certain expectations about what they want and if they don’t get it, some of them are not working.”
As far as sheer volume of annual job openings in Southern Nevada, the report shows that laborers and material movers lead the way at more than 3,100. That’s followed by operations managers (1,440), registered nurses (1,324) and maintenance and repair workers (1,237).
“This is a starting point, not an end point,” Peterson said. “This blueprint’s success will be determined by our ability as a community to carry this plan out.”
To see the complete report and list of the top-100 in-demand jobs, click here.